Third Week Of Bulgarian With The Suggestopedia Method

This third week as a student in Bulgarian at GoBeyond Center with the suggestopedia method was again a very interesting one. Who is Violeta, our Bulgarian teacher ?

We have already reached half of the session, I have 3 weeks of lessons and I have not even spoken to you about Violeta, our Bulgarian teacher. Violeta Kalapova is Bulgarian, of course, a woman that I can describe as gentle, very smiling, attentive to her students and reactive. In this kind of learning method, I think it’s very important, maybe determining, to have this qualities. And she has. When we ask her about why she decided to become Bulgarian teacher through the Suggestopedia Method, she says :

“ I like to tell stories and meet new people. And even more I like to do so in Bulgarian language”

She remembers her foreign friends, that gladly accept the idea for her to teach her native language through the method of Suggestopedia. She graduates Sofia University „St. Kliment Ohridski“with major in “Journalism and Mass Communications”. She starts her journalistic carrier as a radio reporter and anchor, and at the dawn of the online media in Bulgaria, she becomes an editor of the site www.dnevnik.bg, where she worked for almost 10 years. With lots of compassion she creates articles for “My Child” magazine, and in the most recent years she explores the area of public relations and advertisement.

Her connection to Suggestopedia while she worked in the marketing and advertisement department in one of the centres of Suggestopedia, brought out in her many memories. As a child, Violeta listened to her father Dr. Ivan Kalapov, the unusual stories about Prof. Dr. George Lozanov, the creator of Suggestopedia, with whom they perform the sensational for the Sixties surgery without anaesthetic. Her relationship with Suggestopeidia and their teacher and mentor Vanina Bodurova, lighted up in her the desire to search for a venue in the field of Suggestopedia and the idea to teach Bulgarian language raised spontaneously. During the summer of 2015, Violeta trained as a suggestopedagogue with the Foundation Prof.Dr. George Lozanov & Prof.Dr. Evelina Gateva. To teach Bulgarian language for foreigners is a challenge, which Violeta met with interest.

At the beginning of the courses, I was little bit stressed because I’m not very familiar with the learning new languages and I often fear not to succeed. Violeta quickly realized it without needing to say anything. She advised me quickly, from the first day of “course” to relax and let me go. That with the method, it was not by heart or evening classes at home. It was necessary to be at ease and relaxed. Do not seek to know everything right away, do not put pressure. She advised us to put us at ease, bring back our slippers to be like at home and sit as we wished. So I quickly found my corner, and my 4 cushions that I was not going to leave. Most of the sessions, I’m even almost lying down but reassure you I do not sleep, I follow the courses in slippers.

Violeta believes, that the method of Suggestopedia can help many people without effort and with smiles to start speaking Bulgarian spontaneously like little children, encouraged by their mothers. Last Monday, in the context of a new exercise of the suggestopedia method, Violeta “invited” us for dinner and we had the pleasure to drink a real glass of red wine and “eat” Bulgarian specialities. This was the opportunity to learn a lot of vocabulary about everything connected with cuisine, food, drinks, dinners, parties, etc, and for my part to leave the course totaly hungry.

Each new week there is something new, new text, new song, new exercise and it’s for this reason the Suggestopedia Method is very interesting. Go for the fourth week.